The Napoleonic Wars differentiate themselves from other conflits of same length and intensity by the striking bipolarity between French and British Empire’s war finance regimes. These related upon their initial financial system structure, macro-economic development and political stability. We argue that these had a consequence upon each nation's credibility as a debtor. Given its trusted fiscal history, Britain relied heavily on the financial markets and deepened its account deficit without raising the interest rates. It benefited from a rising industrial capitalism and peace-time surpluses. In the other other hand, France’s found its weaknesses from its previous institutional and political instability as well as a stagnant agrarian economy which forced reliance on taxation. Therefore, we argue that there is a strong correlation between wartime finance and conflict outcomes. The financial structure are themselves becoming a target : belligerents implement a strategy of continental blockade that to "conquer the sea threw the land" and recognize the benefits of industrial military production. We argue that it brings the Napoleonic Wars closer to the two major conflicts of the twentieth century from a productivist and financial perspective.

In humans, we know that malaria selection can lead to globin gene diversity: most famously the spread of mutations responsible for sickle cell anaemia. Among other primate species, alpha globin gene variation in the macaque Macaca fascicularis is particularly well studied. We also know that M. fascicularis can be infected with several malaria species in the wild. These factors make it excellent to study further. I will learn to use the program Matlab to carry out the population genetic modelling required for this work.

Malaria has a huge impact on public health. In addition to being an interesting comparison with humans, macaques can even transmit malaria to humans (specifically one species of malaria: Plasmodium knowelsi). Gaining a deeper understanding of malaria in macaques will give us transferable data, that could eventually be fundamental to (i) understanding malaria genetics in humans, and (ii) understanding zoonotic malaria outbreaks. Furthermore, although M. fasciularis is not endangered, other macaque species are, so the insights gained from this project into macaque malaria and macaque population genetics could also have relevance to conservation.

I am enthusiastic to gain further knowledge of a disease-related topic, since the study of disease is an area of biochemistry that I already love. I am also keen to develop further skills in new areas such as being able to develop and interpret computer models, which this specific project will allow me to do. This project allows me to concentrate on a specific area of biology in great detail, which I have yet to gain opportunity of doing.

Do parents’ education and job sector impact the choice to study science at university and does this vary by gender? I use the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England to estimate an empirical model for the determinants of studying science at university, focusing on parental educational and job sector as factors contributing towards studying science at university. I find a significant effect of father’s education and job sector on the decision to study science but no such effect for mothers. I also find a variation by gender: for females, father's job sector is important whereas for males, father’s education is important. My findings suggest that children are basing their educational decisions on their parents, in particular their fathers, which may be reinforcing gender divides. Understanding the gender divide within science at University is of key interest to individuals and policy makers - According to STEM graduates, just 15% of engineering graduates are female. The figures are 19% for computer studies and 38% for maths.

Are we as a people unhappier and less mentally healthy than we once were? Data without contextual analysis would suggest that individuals in most countries have experienced higher rates of depression, anxiety disorder, and ADHD (especially in children), as well as higher suicide rates from the late 20th to the 21st century. This would appear to imply that we are becoming less aware of our mental health. Some argue that governments do not fund mental health research sufficiently, a ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy. For example, some criticize the UK government for not funding NHS mental health care, a form of de-politicization with campaigns such as the Heads Together Campaign taking the place of the government in mental health research funding.

However, contrary to what this might imply without critical thought and attention to historical factors, this conclusion is false. In this report, this author intends to discover how the psychiatric revolution of the 1980s led to a false epidemic in mental health diagnoses, skewing data on increased mental disorders. For example, in the USA the publishing of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-III and the following statistical increase in the number of people diagnosed with mental illnesses.

This project will attempt to debunk the mental-health statistical epidemic through focus on literature, historical events and statistics, as well as culture.

Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of spacetime that propagate at the speed of light, predicted in 1916 in Einstein’s theory of general relativity, and confirmed experimentally in 2016 by the Laser Inferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). They are generated in gravitational interactions - the biggest being the collision of two black holes - and their detection is the motivation behind this project. The Gravitational-Wave Optical Transient Observer (GOTO) is a wide-field robotic telescope which will be used to identify the optical counterparts to these gravitational wave events by mapping the large source regions on the sky that accompany the detections of gravitational waves with the LIGO and VIRGO projects. This research will consist of analysing the first wave of images taken by the telescope, and identifying them. There will also be an emphasis in advising what parts of the analysis process need to be automated, so that future analysis can be accomplished at a much higher and efficient rate. This research will help the GOTO project towards its aim of using this new method to probe into the distant Universe, and to further our current understanding of the nature of gravity.

Whilst studies of the Holocaust have risen to the forefront of discussions in recent years, the thousands of remaining untold stories of deported Jewish children raise the question of the extent of its true commemoration within Paris today. Comprising several geographical sites of memory including the Vélodrome d’Hiver in which 12,884 Jewish people were interned during the Occupation, Paris will serve as my backdrop by analysing the ever-changing role of such locations – how they have shaped literature relating to the histories of Jewish children and their importance or perhaps lack of, in bringing back to life hitherto forgotten individuals.

Building on prior studies of post-Holocaust literature, my knowledge will be honed through the examination of the archives based at the Mémorial de la Shoah and Drancy along with the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This close work within the community will give exposure to the aura of the city itself, thus enabling a comparison to form between my subjective findings and those depicted in literature. A striking example to which I will refer is the hollowness of Paris illustrated in Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder. By following the path laid by a second-generation Holocaust author, my research will reveal the extent of the development in Holocaust commemoration 20 years on.

The research will not only increase awareness of the importance of commemoration by adding to the already existing knowledge in this field, but the possible absence of records may serve as an even more poignant portrayal of the mentality of many Parisians.

Turnip yellows virus (TuYV) is an economically important plant virus, transmitted by insect vectors. It affects a wide range of plants in the Brassica genus, including major arable crops such as oilseed rape and vegetable crops including cabbages, cauliflower and broccoli. The virus is very difficult to identify in crops as it can be symptomless or can cause non-specific symptoms, however it has been shown to reduce oilseed rape yields by 30% and yield of some brassica vegetables by up to 65%. The aim of the research is to evaluate resistance to the virus in the brassica C genome, this will involve phenotyping F1 plants. Attempts will be made to produce a tagged infectious clone of TuYV in order to investigate the mechanism the resistance. The ultimate aim of the project is to answer the question; can genetics be used to reduce crop losses? The results show that this is indeed possible in certain species and that slight variations are required for each specific strain of virus and each plant species. The development and deployment of these resistant crop varieties will reduce crop losses, reduce the necessity for pesticide sprays and contribute to food security.

Depoliticisation is a relatively new term in the study of Politics that emerges from a series of events, such as Global Financial Crisis and climate change. It is commonly understood as a top-down and government-led management tactic which locates incidents and policies outside the political sphere, such that they are no longer relevant to politics or governance. However, this understanding is rather limited subject to a lack of empirical studies. My research project therefore investigates the phenomenon of depoliticisation in Hong Kong, specifically as a public management strategy that emerged from the grassroots. Contrary to common understanding, it explores how political projects are actively rendered into purely cultural or social matters actively by political actors and civil society, an alternative form of depoliticisation.

Using interviews and archival research, this research examines the case of Hong Kong, a former British colony. The practice of depoliticisation is contextualised as a colonial management technique, to establish the relationship between depoliticsation and post-colonial studies. Adopting discourse analysis, it seeks to understand how the act of depoliticsation has become a norm through words and rhetoric used in governance. Apart from ongoing border conflicts and underdevelopment, it thereby calls upon academics and international society to contemplate the continuing impacts of colonialism in a different light, especially in terms of political culture and individuals’ mentalities. Finally, this research fosters reflections upon the questions of ‘what is politics?’ and ‘how can we participate in politics?’, particularly in former colonies.

The current method used for the diagnosis of osteoporosis uses a pair of single element ultrasonic transducers disposed either side of a heel bone, using the frequency dependent attenuation measurement to infer the internal structure of the heel bone. This method involves measuring the ultrasonic attenuation (BUA) of bone in order to calculate the bone mineral density (BMD). However, published literature in the area shows that there are discrepancies between the information provided using ultrasonic techniques and those provided using other methods, such as x-ray scans. A proposed explanation is the interference of the cortical end plates of the bone with the measurement of the BUA. This could arise because the ultrasonic properties of the cortical end plates are quite different to those of the internal bone in the heel. The first stage of this research will be to obtain a clear and quantitative result demonstrating this effect. There is possibly a way to compensate for this frequency dependent transmission effect arising from the cortical end plates. The second stage of this research will be to investigate if the use of an ultrasonic phased array could image the cortical end plate and therefore enable corrections to be made to the calculated BUA.

KIC 2856960 is a triple star system, which is formed of two stars in a tight 6-hour orbit, and a third, more distant star orbiting the binary every 204 days. When viewing this system from the Earth, multiple bizarre eclipses are seen when the binary system passes in front of the third star. In similar cases, geometrical principles can be used to get approximate values of the masses and radii of the three stars. However, previous attempts at calculating these parameters have led to disagreements with fundamental physical laws. My project aims to solve this problem, using new photometry, CCD imaging and spectroscopy data which has been collected since the initial research. I will use data processing techniques to process this data and then analyse the results to produce more precise values and hopefully find a solution to this problem.

National Service continues to be an obligation for the youth of many world nations. Publicly viewed as a service wherein citizens make a positive contribution to their country, it also has strong associations with Sociological issues such as citizenship, human rights, nationalism and patriotism. Many countries differ in their National Service programmes, with military National Service being the most controversial and problematic form of enforced service. National Service also remains to be a gendered issue, with many nations requiring only men to serve whilst women remain exempt.The operation of National Service in Singapore provides a fascinating research example; as despite being a metropolitan and economically stable nation state, it falls under an interesting category of nations which enforces compulsory military National Service for more than 18 months. I aim to address, through the qualitative analysis of interviews reinforced by reviewing relevant literature, the fundamental issue of how far the power of the state impacts the individual lives of Singaporean citizens. I will be conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with Singaporean citizens in order to understand how this obligation is viewed, one which often interrupts a young person’s educational or career pathway.Most interviewees will have already completed their service time, therefore being able to reflect on how it has affected their lives and sense of duty to the state. I will also conduct interviews with Singaporean females, in order to investigate whether the gendered division of service alters different citizens’ perceptions of how much power the state holds over their individual lives.

Subitisation is the process of rapidly and accurately enumerating up to 4 target items. Two potential mechanisms have been suggested to explain this phenomenon; pattern recognition (increased enumeration due to practice) and the FINST model (limitation in the amount of items we can ‘see’ at a time). Evidence from previous research has been contradictory and inconclusive. To establish which model is superior, we compared the reaction time and subitisation range of 36 participants between different dot configurations (patterns they knew well, and unknown patterns). We found that subitisation was equally efficient for all configurations. Indicating that subitisation is not the result of learning (pattern recognition) and therefore present findings consistent with the FINST model. We also investigated the effect of homogenous and heterogenous target items on subitisation to establish whether encoding includes target characteristics. We found RT to be slower for heterogeneous stimuli, suggesting that target characteristics do affect enumeration. However, this difference was only relevant outside of the subitisation range, suggesting that subitisation is not affected. For the FINST model, this suggests that target characteristics are not included in initial encoding. Moreover, there was no difference in RT between male and female participants. These findings are important because they tell us something about how the visual system works, which is relevant in both a theoretical and clinical context.

The partition of India, in 1947, into India and Pakistan left both nations politically and socially crippled. The process of partition itself was characterised by the outbreak of riots and murder, claiming several lives. Women, in particular, often subjected to sexual abuse, were objectified and used to establish power.

My research focuses on the way in which literature is able to depict the complexity of the post-colonial consciousness, through varying literary trends. I will, therefore, explore a variety of texts, with particular focus on the experience of women within post-colonial India. Such texts include, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day and Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. Post-colonialism, itself, has been established as a literary theory, which can be applied on a globalised scale.

My research will demonstrate how post-colonialism is, in fact, predominantly a lived experience, raising the question of whether these writers are successful in their attempt to depict a nation enmeshed in this global discourse, on a much more localised level. Both Desai’s Clear Light of Day and Roy’s The God of Small Things, set in small towns, provide a focalised portrayal of a nationwide divide but within a local community. My analysis will extend to the way all three texts, in their expression of the plight experienced by a single family, gives a voice to the previously silenced post-colonial woman, demonstrating the collapse of traditional views on gender roles and the very concept of the family.

Farmers currently have to apply fertilisers to the soil to compensate for low phosphorus and nitrogen levels, but with adverse effects to the environment and economy. Thus, it would be beneficial to attempt to harness naturally-occurring mutualistic soil microbes, which can supply these nutrients to the plant with fewer unnecessary costs. We are studying the enhanced effects brought by co-inoculating plants with the specialist N-fixing microbe Sinorhizobium meliloti and the P-supplying fungus Piriformospora indica. Plants which have symbioses with both of these microbes are protected against devastating root stresses, and their growth is enhanced beyond the additive effects of the individual microbes.

This project will help to identify the genes in plants that enable this co-symbiosis, using gene expression analysis of plants during plant-microbe interaction. In particular, we will be studying how these microbes promote rhizobial nodulation in plants and protect against root stresses. Although the individual effects of these microbes on plant performance have been studied, we do not yet know the combined benefits that they bring, or how the plant itself can control this co-symbiosis. This research will no doubt allow us to exploit these mutualistic microbes for use in an agricultural setting. If we can learn to harness these naturally-occurring microbes, we can reduce our current usage of costly fertilisers. With the present world food crisis, investigating the co-symbiosis of these microbes could sustainably boost plant productivity and crop yield with fewer repercussions for the planet.

Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theory of ‘The Right to the City’, the "demand...[for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life", this paper will examine the ways in which Detroit’s urban fabric was transformed and politically radicalised by a pioneering music movement in the 1980s. The study will first historicise Detroit’s post war position and identify the origins of its ‘urban crisis’ (T. Sugrue), notably intense racial segregation, wealth inequality and capital flight. Such circumstances translating to an ownership of the urban space by the wealthy white population. Through consultation of cultural sources, particularly research into the music of the ‘Belleville Three’, pioneers of the Detroit techno scene, and analysis of the political significance of the genre of Afrofuturism, this paper will explain the importance and efficacy of creative underground resistance movements in claiming the right to the city, which particularly in the case of Detroit, had been snatched from the African American population. The music produced out of the city became an integral component of the Detroit identity and on a wider scale, Detroit was recognised as a unique setting for the birth and flourishing of musical subgenres, an image which stands strong today. The combination of studying the legacy of the Detroit techno movement alongside spatial theory aims to provoke unique interdisciplinary reflections on the reclaiming of public and underground spaces by the marginalised through cultural rather than legislative discourse today.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Las Madres de La Plaza de Mayo) is an Argentinian human rights association. It is made up of Argentine women whose children disappeared at the hands of the Military Government during Argentina’s Dirty War in the late 1970s. An estimated 30,000 people disappeared during this period, fewer than 600 of which have been found and identified since. To many, Las Madres and their ongoing social activism to discover the fate of those disappeared have become a symbol for Argentina’s continuing struggle for justice.

More recently, however, the human rights group has been accused of embezzlement scandals, it has become increasingly politicised with members openly backing questionable political groups in Argentina and Latin America, it has been denounced by the current right wing government and has split marginally, dividing the group into “radical” factions.

This investigation aims to peer more closely into what the mothers represent in Argentina today and public opinion towards them. It is a contemporary study and thus focuses on changes in public opinion over the past 6 years. To gain an objective understanding of public opinion towards the Mothers, this study will combine newspaper readings, interviews and photos.

Given that the mothers form such a crucial part of the identity of modern Argentinian history, there is surprisingly little academic work examining their contemporary role in Argentinian society and politics. This study aims to take a first step into that process.

Ultrasound waves have many practical applications, one of which being the non-destructive testing of materials to find structural defects. These approaches to non-destructive testing are highly sought after in industry, and methods of increasing the spatial resolution of ultrasound images will be in high demand. This project will develop new focused electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) designs with the overall aim of investigating the effectiveness of various EMATs at producing higher quality images. The use of focusing techniques to give instruments a smaller localised focal point will be investigated, providing both increased spatial resolution and wave amplitude, reducing the required input power to the device. The concept of phased pulsing with the use of multiple EMAT coils will also be investigated with the aim of producing similar effects; either via increasing the output power of the device, or by increasing the maximum workable frequency of the EMAT. The project will require both the construction of new EMAT designs, as well as the use of computer modelling to investigate ultrasound interaction within the material tested and to identify suitable focusing parameters for the EMATs. New EMAT designs will be inspired by single coil focused EMATs and the well-established knowledge of linear set ups, applying this to a four coil, focused regime. An element of trial and error testing will be used to optimise EMAT coil layouts. This investigation will endeavour to improve the efficacy of current ultrasound transducer designs to allow smaller defects to be imaged at a higher quality.

This project centres on the classical discrete time Galton-Watson branching process. This is a stochastic process first introduced at the dawn of the theory of Markov processes in order to investigate the extinction of family names, however its use extends far beyond this niche application. This random process is used to model the growth of populations, not only of living organisms, but in particle and nuclear physics also. The project starts with an introduction to branching processes, reviewing important properties such as the probability of extinction and how the expected population size changes with time. In order to present this more clearly I will create a simulation of a branching process using an exponential distribution in order to show how the population will grow or become extinct depending the parametrisation. Furthermore I will investigate advanced properties of the process. In particular I will be looking at the time asymptotic properties of the process such as the quasi-stationary distribution of the family size when conditioned on non extinction. This idea extends that of the normal stationary distributions considered for Markov chains and introduces the notion of a Yaglom limit. These quasi-stationary distributions are considered in modern state-of-the-art problems of probability and statistics for applications in computational inference, particle physics and population genetics. I will use classical references on branching processes such as Theodore E Harris’s “The Theory of Branching Processes” from 1964 ,the work of John Lamperti and more general works on Markov Chains.

This project will explore high level design tools including C-to-gates tools and the PYNQ platform. PYNQ is an attempt to simplify the design of Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based systems using a Python design environment running on an embedded web server in the FPGA. This allows peripherals to be combined to create an application more easily than would be possible using traditional Register-Transfer Level (RTL) design. This project will use this new framework and explore how it can be extended. Other tools will also be explored as platforms for generating hardware accelerators from high-level code.

FPGAs are widely used in areas such as Signal and Image processing and Machine Learning. FPGAs consist of blocks and it is relatively easy to change the design and add features, which makes them suitable for prototyping. These features contribute to the rapid growth of FPGAs. Most of existing Hardware Design Languages do not capture important properties of system design and therefore design is limited by scope and expressivity of these languages. Considering the benefits of using FPGAs, this project aims to make it easier to implement FPGAs in wider applications by creating tools that are more expressive and make the design of complex systems more understandable and therefore resulting in more efficient and cheaper solutions.

My project focuses on the role played by the British government in helping shape the postcolonial legal systems of her former colonies. Using Malaysia as a case study, the project seeks to chart the constitutional experience of the state in the period after independence in 1957. This project will take various angles using the Constitution drafted by the Reid Commission as a starting point—the social contract forged through the main ethnic groups in the Southeast Asian state as well as the federalisation of the Malay states to form what became Malaya. A comparative approach will be taken in analysing the similarities and differences in other postcolonial legal histories. Finally, the project will examine the extent to which Britain continued to play a role in shaping the Malaysian legal system following independence

The academic study of sexual imagery is an area compromised by the lasting impacts of nineteenth century conservative scholarship. For, we have inherited the prudishness of scholars before us. The consequences of older attitudes to sex have spread to impact our understanding of the ancient world. This paper acknowledges that this censorship has obscured the reality of obscene visual symbolism in ancient Rome. The portrayal of sexual imagery has often been sensationalized, thus we must engage with materials yet to have been satisfactorily considered. This will best challenge our preconceived notions of erotic art. Therefore, this paper looks to a class of material which has never been properly examined before – tokens; specifically, those depicting sexual acts.

Conceptually akin to modern-day vouchers, ancient Roman tokens were exchangeable for prescribed goods and services. They have previously received very little study, least of all those portraying lewd acts. As such, the tokens investigated in this project are those which are previously unpublished and inaccessible. Their erotic imagery will be scrutinized in relation to other imagery in the city of Rome. This provides context as to the placement of this imagery, so it can be better understood. An examination of this sort will facilitate a movement away from the suppressive conservatism of past scholars. Since, in comprehending tokens – their imagery and their roles in ancient Roman society – we shall allow ourselves a better understanding of the Roman people.

Through a multigenerational study, the project will seek to understand the degree to which Palestinian masculinity has been moulded by Israeli occupation since 1967. Broadly, the project will be framed within three time periods: pre-Oslo Accords, from the Oslo-Accords to the second intifada, and from the second intifada to the present day. The project will utilise a semi-structured interview process, in which Palestinian men and women will be asked about their sense of self, their past experiences with the occupying forces and their perceived roles in society. The project subscribes to Judith Butler’s notion of ‘gender performativity’, in which gender is conceptualised as something fluid, and defined by gendered acts. Consequently, I will apply a theoretical understanding of gender to the reality of the occupation. By studying the effects of the occupation within these distinct time periods, the project will discern intergenerational divides regarding the accepted performance of masculinity, in relation to changing Israeli security practices.

Whilst some scholars have noted that Palestinian masculinity has been shaped by Israel’s occupation, the particular ways in which it has changed remain relatively unexplored. Understanding the shift in gender norms amongst Palestinians, and how masculinity is expected to be performed, serves to aid our understanding of the conflict. First, it will provide insight into the continual evolution of Palestinian society, and how gender roles have changed as a consequence of occupation. Second, a deeper understanding of how Palestinian masculinity is performed may inform further research into conflicts between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian population.

The negative correlation between primary exports as a proportion of gross domestic product (Xp/GDP) and gross domestic product growth in the last three decades of the 20th century is a striking observation documented by Sachs & Warner (1997) as a natural resource curse, the notion that higher resource abundance causes lower economics. Mehlum et al. (2002) challenged this notion arguing that the effect of resources on growth depends on a combination of Xp/GDP & the quality of the current institutions that utilise them. We build on their work to treat an identification problem (endogeneity) in the coefficient of Xp/GDP which biases it downwards. In particular, foreign economic dependence determined by a country’s colonial history simultaneously increases primary exports and plummets growth. Using IV estimation, we exploit resource abundance measures such as gas reserves etc. to instrument for Xp/GDP, our results support that resource abundance has in fact a positive yet insignificant impact on growth in 1980-2000 using a cross-sectional dataset of averages. Also, we demonstrate statistically the channel through which we believe the bias on the coefficient appears and comment on heterogeneity. Our results are robust to a) choice of controls, b) different specifications c) data reported by different organisations & d) measures of primary exports & institutions. Having discussed the limitations of our analysis, we address the policy and research implications of our study including that countries which find natural resources shouldn't consider the impact of natural resources on economic growth and that researchers need to establish causal relationships with unbiased estimators.

The origin of Galois Theory lies in the determination of solutions to polynomial equations and certain relationships between their roots. Central to Galois Theory lies one of Mathematics most famous conjectures: the Inverse Galois problem (IGP). Fundamentally, it asks whether every finite group (that is a mathematical object of finite size) is realizable as a Galois group over the rational numbers (a highly symmetric structure related to polynomials with rational coefficients). A crowning achievement of the 20th century was demonstrating that certain finite groups satisfy the IGP by a variety of different methods. However, though deep theoretical techniques exist in determining whether certain finite groups are realizable as Galois groups, the techniques have been disparate, each dealing with but a select few special cases.

The goal of this project is to use an assortment of programming languages in order to determine whether a certain class of groups, known as Mathieu Groups, can be considered to be Galois groups. Hitherto, there has been little development in the computational realization of the associated polynomials of Mathieu groups and we hope to provide some systematic way of explicitly evaluating the polynomials of these groups via computationally efficient algorithms. In particular, we shall implement the LLL-algorithm (1982) which essentially finds the roots of polynomials in certain special ‘number systems’. By implementing and modifying the said algorithm where necessary, we will further the study of the Inverse Galois Problem and establish more general techniques than presently available to understand the IGP.

Mobile technology use is embedded in all areas of human activity. However, despite the numerous uses and advantages, its use is often considered an obstruction in face-to-face interaction and its use in the classroom as a learning resource is often stigmatized. Improving our understanding of how everyday mobile devices are used outside the classroom will aid us to identify opportunities to utilize them within formal learning contexts. In educational domains such as modern foreign language learning, identifying learning activities that pupils find engaging is a significant challenge, as identified by experts such as Brendan Bartram. Creating innovative activities involving the use of mobile devices could provide a means of addressing this challenge.

I conducted an ethnography exploring how university staff and students use mobile devices within their social interactions, specifically their face-to-face interactions, rather than computer-mediated interactions between parties, such as interfacing via social networks. I observed two groups of participants socialising in a café environment. I collected data using field notes and audio-visual recordings. I observed how performing different activities through mobile device use, including activities that did not contribute directly to the face-to-face interaction, influenced participants' linguistic and non-verbal communication, thus affecting the dynamics of the interaction. This knowledge will improve our understanding of how mobile devices can be used to enrich face-to-face interaction, which will be valuable in informing the design of learning activities.

Particle Physics is one of the most exciting and fast moving areas in modern Physics, with multiple avenues of research being explored at once. One such area is that of b-physics; which concerns the study of particles containing the b-quark. The large data sets collected by the at CERN over recent years have renewed interest in studying certain types of these particles and their associated decays. The LHCb experiment is uniquely poised to study a type of particle called the baryon and, in particular, those baryons containing the b-quark.

Historically, most observations were made for the Lambda_b baryons. In this project, we aim to investigate the feasibility of measuring the production polarisation of another particle, the Xi_b baryon, using the LHCb experiment. We develop a robust analysis strategy to be used on LHCb data to determine the achievable precision of such measurements.